So over the last year, I've become quite good at playing nursery rhymes on my guitar–it's one of the easist ways to be able to actually play guitar while concomitantly appeasing the attentions of my two-year old daughter.  On my favorites (because it's easy) is the old-standby, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. 

Well, this last Saturday night, I did not sleep a wink.  Therefore, all Sunday was somewhat of a daze.  However, somewhere in the midst of it, I was playing this song and was struck by the question posed throughout:  "How I wonder what you are."  Indeed, I thought, how we do wonder what stars are. 

Of course, science tells us that they are giant balls of coalesced stellar gases.  Pa-shaw.  Here's my philosophical analysis.

Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are

Up above the world so high, like a diamond in the sky

Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are

Are you really just a ball of gas, as the hegenomy of science says?

Why should I believe that, when no one's ever seen it, and no one's ever touched it

I know I've never tasted it; I've never had a side of star with turkey on rye

Maybe it's an animal; maybe just a great machine

It's harder to tell what's real, and separate the make-believe

Maybe it's a giant sheet the ancients spread across the sky

And the moderns came in with their sticks, and only poked holes in it…

That kind of makes sense to me, because I have some holes of my own

And you say, you say, you say I'm a star; or at least I'm made of it

So when I pierced full through, with Western epistemology

Maybe I can be one of your stars; reducible to bare phenomenology

And you say, you say, you say I'm a star; you say, you say, you say I'm a star…